Ben Soul

head up the trail into the Village. She guessed they were gathering for a party. All the better to catch them unawares, she thought to herself. Shikunok’s spirit chuckled in Vanna’s hindbrain.

  Vanna stood and stretched. She moved stiffly out of the redwoods and crossed the highway. As much as she could, she kept to the shadows the descending night was casting across San Danson Station. Once she had passed through the Station area, she crept quietly up the trail toward Emma and Haakon’s cottage. Just before she reached it, the llamas appeared on the trail, blocking her way. Vanna cursed. After her earlier brush with the beasts she had no desire to engage them again. Prudence dictated she either climb the mountain, or go down to the beach.

  Vanna chose the beach. She remembered the llamas were most agile on steep slopes and precipitous cliffs. The llamas watched her go down to the packed sand and nodded. They had done their bit, and they would continue to stand guard. Now the Village was high ground, and Vanna did not occupy it.

  The beach was far closer to the cove waters than Vanna liked, but she determined to endure it. She remembered the trail at the other end offered a way up into the Village. The fog that writhed and wreathed around her could not touch her. She had cast a drying spell to protect her body. It required only a little of her powers.

  The crashing surf annoyed Vanna. She thrust the sound out of her consciousness, and contemplated the climb up the steps cut into the bluff toward the Chapel. She knew Dickon was up there, and she burned to destroy him. She felt great power, as well, an awesome threat of light beat against her. She climbed into it, defying it. When she reached the top of the bluff, she joined battle.

  Ben, as the Village’s power focus and champion, met her attack head on.

  Clashing Spirits

  Ben experienced a hammering at his mind and soul. Blow fell upon blow fell upon blow. Words echoed in his brain. “Resistance is futile,” a dead mechanical voice proclaimed to him. Ben walled off his mental ears. He sent out great bursts of energy to contain Vanna’s attack in chains of bright light. Vanna broke those chains.

  On her side, Vanna experienced sending out pulses of darkness to negate Ben’s light force. When Ben counter-attacked, Vanna experienced white roses with vicious thorns binding her hands and head. She imagined hordes of earwigs, black as night, and glittering like obsidian in firelight, chewing away the petals and thorns. She felt Ben’s next attack as an insecticide spray. Quickly she contrived a chemical antidote. She attacked Ben again, struggling to separate him limb from limb.

  Ben blunted Vanna’s attack with a shield of light. He sought again to bind Vanna, to subdue her. He was mindful that La Señora’s failure to be compassionate had flawed her subduing Vanna. Ben sent out chains fashioned into metal snakes to surround Vanna and bind her.

  Vanna countered with hideous mongooses, whose blackened teeth rent the snakes into shreds of drying skin and flesh that blew away on a mighty wind. Ben conjured mice, then, wee rodents of light, to nibble at Vanna’s toes and ears and nose, hoping to distract her from the net he constructed of light and raised over her head. Vanna flung tiny knives at the net and rodents, shredding the net and slaying the rodents.

  And they paused, each to gather strength. Dickon, making his circle of the Chapel, dimly saw Vanna’s figure in the agitated mists. He yearned to rush her, push her over the edge. A tendril of thought from Princess Valiant forestalled Dickon’s rushing his ex-wife. DiConti came up from the Station and joined Dickon.

  “How’s it going?” DiConti asked in a low voice.

  “I really don’t know,” Dickon said. “Vanna’s over there, at the head of the trail from the beach. I wanted to push her over, but Princess Val says not to.”

  “I guess we have to trust her instincts,” DiConti said. “I’ll go on back. Give me three or four minutes, and we can circle the Chapel. Clockwise direction?”

  “Clockwise it is,” Dickon said. He watched the trim deputy disappear into the thickening mists, counted out about four minutes, and began his circling again.

  Vanna struck, hoping to catch Ben unawares. Ben, though resting, had remained alert. He could feel the approach of Vanna’s psychic spear and sent out flames to burn it in mid air. Vanna began a barrage of darkness that probed every inch of Ben’s defenses. Rats followed vipers, vipers followed cockroaches, cockroaches followed poison darts, and then the circle of vicious things began again. While Ben was busy repulsing these invasions, Vanna probed for weaknesses in Ben’s mind. The power surging through Ben’s neural pathways was so strongly communal, thanks to Val’s channeling of the Village people, that Vanna was confused. She sought the spirit of Shikunok’s advice.

  Unbeknownst to her, this opened to Ben her justified fear of water. A plan formed in Ben’s mind. Behind his shields which were still repelling vipers, rats, cockroaches, and poison darts. He twisted bright silver ropes from strands of the surf. As he twisted them, he coiled them around Vanna, until his mental picture of her looked like Laocoőn strangled by Poseidon’s serpents on Troy’s war-ravaged strand.

  His maneuver terrified Vanna. She imaged black flames from burning coal to evaporate the chains of surf. They hissed away. The psychic recoil stunned Ben, and Vanna discovered, just before he slammed his mental doors shut, that Ben’s vulnerability lay in Dickon. Vanna sought out Dickon. Yes, he was here. She could revenge herself on this man she had grown to hate so much. She waited for him to come around the Chapel on his patrol. When he came in sight, she shot a great thunderbolt of hate at him. Ben barely deflected it in time. Unthinking and unplanned, Ben raised a great waterspout from the Cove and whirled it up the beach and onto the bluff. The Crablord rode its vortex like a horseman of vengeance.

  The waterspout swirled around Vanna, enveloping her in water. Her skin shriveled as it sizzled and yet the water came. Her flesh dissolved in agonizing streams of liquid that vaporized as the water dissolved her. Her last agonizing scream shrilled across the Cosmos as the water found her bones, and washed them painfully away into the nether ether. The Crablord went with her, cooked red in the steam of her dissolution. Dickon fell to his knees, stunned. Tears ran from his green eyes and mingled with the fog droplets on his face.

  As the Fog Eddies

  DiConti found Dickon face down on the ground. He ran to the prone man, fearing he was dead. When he got to Dickon, the man was conscious, though still weeping.

  “Dickon,” DiConti said, “can you get up?”

  “I think so,” Dickon gasped out between sobs. “She’s gone, DiConti, gone altogether.”

  “Vanna? Vanna’s gone?”

  “Dissolved,” Dickon said, as he levered himself up using DiConti’s outstretched hand. “We don’t have to worry about her coming back.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes,” Dickon said, trying to brush the damp grass stains from his clothes. “I watched the waterspout wash the life out of her.” He coughed. “It was so sad to watch. I hadn’t expected to feel sad about it.” He stared at the fog where Vanna had been. He shook his head. “I hadn’t thought I’d feel sad,” he murmured.

  “Come inside, then,” DiConti said. “If it’s all over, the others should know, too. And, I think you need a cup of tea, or something, to warm you up. You’re shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Dickon said. “Oh!” He ran for the Chapel door. “I’ve got to see if Ben’s all right!”

  DiConti ran after Dickon. The Chapel door was locked from the inside. Dickon began pounding on it. “Let me in,” he cried. “Let me in!”

  A muffled voice came through the door, and then Dickon heard Butter barking.

  “What?” Dickon shouted.

  “Someone’s knocking at the door,” Charles Algernon Burnswine screeched. “Someone’s knocking at the door!”

  “DiConti, are you out there?” Notta’s voice came through the keyhole. “What’s happening?”
br />   “It’s over, love,” DiConti said through the keyhole. He almost shouted to be sure Notta heard him over the commotion Butter, Dickon, and the parrot were making.

  “Ouch!” Notta said. “No need to break my eardrum!” She turned the lock and opened the door. “DiConti,” she said, and fell into his arms. He began kissing her.

  She broke away from him. “Hyacinth!” she shouted, and ran to her daughter. Hyacinth was sleeping calmly, a beatific smile on her childish face. Ermentrude, beside her, yawned, and resumed purring.

  “She’s okay,” Notta said to DiConti. She almost sang the words. “Hyacinth’s okay!”

  Dickon saw Ben lying so very still on the Chapel floor. He rushed to Ben and grasped his hand. It was damp, almost feverish. “Ben,” Dickon said, anguish thickening his voice. He brushed Ben’s hair back from his brow, scarcely noticing how white it had gone during the psychic struggle. Butter came, whining, and licked Ben’s face. Ben’s slow, agonized, breathing did not change. His eyelids fluttered, as though he dreamed, and went still.

  “He can’t hear you,” the Swami gasped out. He was just coming to consciousness. “It’ll probably be a while before he can hear anyone.”

  “Is he all right?” Dickon anxiously asked.

  “I don’t know. I hope so.” the Swami said. “We were all concentrating, all melded together.